Bumbershoot’s “Big Fake Deep Foot Competition” invited creators worldwide to make a Bigfoot-centered AI-assisted, manipulated or deepfake-style video no longer than five minutes. The winner was promised $5,000, with selected films screened in the festival’s new Animation District. It was a creative 2024 event—not a real search for Bigfoot—and submissions are closed.
What the Big Fake Deep Foot competition was
Bumbershoot created the competition for its 2024 Animation District, asking artists, filmmakers, animators and technologists to fabricate a short video featuring Bigfoot. The premise deliberately played with the language of “evidence”: entrants could place the legendary creature in ordinary, absurd, political, comedic or cinematic situations.
Reports described the technology broadly. A submission might be AI-assisted, composited or otherwise manipulated; the available announcements do not establish that every film had to use a particular model, face-swap system or generative-video platform. The requirement was a Bigfoot video, uploaded to YouTube, with a maximum runtime of five minutes. Contemporary coverage said creators from around the world could enter. See the GeekWire account and Animation World Network announcement.
Why use Bigfoot to talk about deepfakes?
Bigfoot is unusually suited to a conversation about synthetic media. The creature is deeply associated with the Pacific Northwest and with blurry photographs, disputed sightings and arguments over whether visual evidence proves anything. Viewers already approach Bigfoot footage expecting uncertainty and make-believe.
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Bumbershoot creative director and producer Greg Lundgren also described Bigfoot as a politically ambiguous, gender-neutral subject. That let the festival examine fabricated video without putting a real person’s face, voice or reputation at the center of the exercise. The result was a low-stakes way to ask a high-stakes question: when an image looks convincing, what—if anything—does seeing it establish?
The prize, jury and screening plan
The announced prize was $5,000 in cash. A jury, rather than an open public vote, was to select the winner. Coverage described a deliberately eclectic panel including a Bigfoot expert, comic artist, deepfake specialist, art critic and a “really hairy guy.”
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Selected entries were scheduled for screening in the Animation District at Seattle Center during Bumbershoot on August 31 and September 1, 2024. The reports disagree about the size of the screening group: GeekWire said as many as 20 entries, while Animation World Network said the top 15. It is safer to describe the plan as a selected group of films unless the original rules are available.
GeekWire disclosed that it was a supporting sponsor and that its writer would serve on the jury. That relationship matters when weighing details drawn from the publication’s account.
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Rules and dates reported at the time
| Item | Reported detail |
|---|---|
| Competition | “Big Fake Deep Foot Competition” |
| Prize | $5,000 cash for the winning entry |
| Video length | Five minutes maximum |
| Upload method | YouTube |
| Eligibility | International; creators from around the world |
| Submission deadline | Late July 2024; reports differ between July 28 and midnight July 31 |
| Festival screening | Animation District, Seattle Center, August 31–September 1, 2024 |
| Screening count | Reported variously as 15 or up to 20 selected entries |
Local coverage also reported the YouTube-based submission process. Because contemporary stories conflict on the deadline, neither July 28 nor July 31 should be presented as unquestionably authoritative without the original competition rules.
How it fit into Bumbershoot’s Animation District
The Bigfoot contest was one program inside a broader visual-arts initiative, not the whole of Bumbershoot’s AI programming. The inaugural Animation District included screenings, talks, augmented reality, gaming, contemporary animation and youth activities. Reported guests included animation and visual-effects professionals connected with films such as Nimona and Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse. Forbes’ festival coverage provides additional context, while The Stranger’s lineup announcement places the project within Bumbershoot’s wider arts program.
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The serious idea beneath the joke
“Deepfake” is often used in discussions of political disinformation, harassment, fraud and reputational harm. Bumbershoot’s approach inverted that anxiety: instead of inventing a statement by a real politician or depicting a real person doing something they never did, participants could invent footage of a creature whose existence is already folklore.
That framing did not solve the risks of synthetic media, and it did not make every production method harmless. Its value was artistic and educational. By placing obviously fictional footage in a festival setting, the competition encouraged audiences to separate visual polish from factual reliability and to consider how easily a plausible moving image can be mistaken for documentation.
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Is the $5,000 opportunity still open?
No. The contest belonged to Bumbershoot’s August 31–September 1, 2024 festival, and the reported late-July 2024 submission deadline has passed. As of August 18, 2026, the available coverage does not establish a verified winner, confirm that the prize was paid, or show that the competition returned in a later year. A YouTube upload requirement also does not guarantee that entries remain publicly viewable; videos may have been removed, made private or deleted.
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